Detection of contaminants in the environment is important for various applications, but such detection can be difficult and/or costly to perform in practice. The issues involved can be better appreciated by considering the specific application of detection of arsenic in groundwater.
Current solutions for arsenic testing range from simple colorimetric assays to sophisticated laboratory tests. Colorimetric kits, such as the Wagtech Visual Color Arsenic Detection Kit and Arsenator® Digital Arsenic Test Kit, are simple and low-cost, yet generally suffer from a lack of precision, have a higher limit of detection (>10 μg/L), and use toxic chemicals as test reagents. Laboratory-based techniques, such as mass spectrometry, are accurate but considerably more expensive, requiring off-site analysis of samples.
Accordingly, it would be an advance in the art to provide improved low-cost detection of environmental contaminants, such as arsenic in groundwater.